Edgar Allan Poe

Personal Life

When Poe was two years old, his mother died. His father had already abandoned him so he was fostered into the Allan family. He started writing when he was 13 years old and enrolled in the University of Virginia. He quickly went into debt and tried to gamble to pay it off. That plan didn't work out very well so he fell into even worse debt and had to drop out. He needed to support himself so he joined the United States Army. After two years in the army he discharged to pursue an education at the United States Military Academy at West Point and moved from city to city until he finally settled down in Richmond, VA.

He secretly married his 13 year old cousin but then publicly married her when he was 27. They lived together until she died of tuberculous in her 20's. Her death sparked an increase in his drinking.

Poe's death was very mysterious and sudden. He left Virginia to go to New York and disappeared. He was in a tavern, drunk and ill, wearing someone else's clothes and was taken to a hospital. He was found a week later (October 7th, 1849) dead on the streets of Baltimore.